NEWPORT BEACH : Board Ready to OK Principles Statement

Trustees of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District have indicated they are ready to approve a mission statement for the district.

The district’s Statement of Educational Principles has not been revised since the early 1980s and school officials said they will send copies to local PTA organizations so the community has a chance to review the statement before the board acts.

The board is expected to give initial approval to the document at its first meeting in October and to approve it at the second meeting.

Though the broad-reaching statement does not deal with specific plans or issues about how to teach children, it serves as a guide to show the district’s direction, Board President Sherry Loofbourrow said. She likened it to “a declaration of independence for the district.”

The new policy does not break substantially from the previous one, but the review was necessary to ensure that the goals of the current board and the statement were the same.

The only questions raised in the document as presented to the board last week were some minor language issues. Loofbourrow was concerned that two parts of the document’s preamble might perpetuate an appearance that Americans consider themselves superior to people from other countries.